Guest Op-Ed: A Just Society Doesn’t Criminalize Girls

Too frequently, educational
justice is denied for girls – especially for girls of color. Schools should be
the safest place for our children and yet, for many girls of color, the school
environment adds painful weight to their already heavy emotional backpacks.

Across our country, black
and brown girls are pushed out of school not because they pose any sort of
threat, but for simply being who they are. Society too often deems our hair too
distracting and our bodies too provocative, our voices too loud, and our
attitudes too mean — demeaning our very existence before we even reach
adulthood. According to the National Women’s Law Center, black girls in
preschool are 54 percent of the girls receiving out-of-school suspensions
despite making up only 20 percent of girls enrolled in preschool. Preschool.

We are internalizing
oppression before we’ve learned to read or write.

From kindergarten to 12th
grade, black girls are seven times more likely than white girls to be suspended
from school, and four times more likely to be arrested at school. Latinx girls
are more than 1.5 times as likely as white girls to receive an out of school
suspension, and Native American girls are suspended at three times the rate of
white girls. When we unfairly discipline our girls, we rob them of their
childhood by treating them as if they need less protection, nurturing, and
comfort than other children. We fail to see their humanity and we fail to
respond to the adverse childhood experiences that so many of us experience in
our youth.

These disturbing
discrepancies are the result of a failure to cultivate schools as locations for
healing so that they can be locations for learning.

The policies and unfair
practices that disproportionately push girls of color from institutions of
learning stem from deeply entrenched biases that require bold, community-based
solutions to correct. Now is the time to support relationship-building, mental
health support, and restorative interventions, as opposed to unfair and
exclusionary discipline.

This alarming crisis is what
led to the development of the Ending Punitive, Unfair, School-based Harm that
is Overt and Unresponsive to Trauma Act. The Ending PUSHOUT Act aims to
dismantle school-to-confinement pathways by creating an ecosystem within our
schools where all children, especially children of color, can heal and thrive.

In order to create safe and
nurturing school environments for all students, the Ending PUSHOUT Act
emphasizes gender-specific and culturally responsive protocols and policies
that work to intentionally and holistically support girls of color. The bill
establishes new federal grants to support states and districts that commit to
ban unfair and discriminatory school discipline practices; it protects the
Civil Rights Data Collection and strengthens the Department of Education’s
Office of Civil Rights, both of which have been threatened by the Trump
administration; and it establishes a Federal Interagency Taskforce to End the
School Pushout crisis, to measure the efficacy of these reforms and share best
practices.

The Ending PUSHOUT Act
challenges schools to ban most suspensions and expulsions for our youngest
learners in pre-k through 5th grade; ban suspensions and expulsions in all
grades for minor infractions such as tardiness and violations of dress codes
and hair policies; and ban the heinous practice of corporal punishment, which
is still legal in 19 states.

The Ending PUSHOUT Act is
the first of many bills stemming from Representative Pressley’s People’s
Justice Guarantee — a bold, progressive resolution outlining a new vision for
the American legal system that makes good on the promise of justice for all.
Achieving this vision requires all of us to dismantle the systems of oppression
and control that have unfairly policed and criminalized marginalized
communities for generations. The Ending PUSHOUT Act does just that, centering
the experiences of young girls of color and keeping them out of the criminal
legal system and in the classroom where they can learn, thrive, and develop the
skills necessary to achieve their dreams.

US Rep. Ayanna Pressley represents Massachusetts’
Seventh Congressional District. Monique W. Morris, Ed.D. is the creator of the
documentary “PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools” and the
Founder and President of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute.